


all the smiles and sighs

by withkissesfour



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-02-15
Packaged: 2018-09-14 16:04:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9190898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/withkissesfour/pseuds/withkissesfour
Summary: She is (was) (is) in love. There’s nothing she can do about it.The loves of Clara Oswald's life.





	1. Jamie.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jontinf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jontinf/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jamie finds her, a little while later, in the sun, holding pages between her fingers and sits down opposite her, quiet.

 

 

_Jamie._

 

He sits across from her in the classroom – between Emily B. and Emily H. – and is exactly four months older, will turn twelve in exactly two weeks. He has neat handwriting and a drawling Australian accent and she is jealous of the way his name rolls off the teacher’s tongue. It doesn’t drag like her name (people’s mouths wide as church doors as they tumble over the syllables and vowels) (Cl _aaaa_ r _aaaaa_ ), and it makes them flash their teeth, like a smile, when they reach the _i-e._

It sits in tidy coloured capitals, on the edge of his desk – diagonal from hers; and is etched into the side of the pencil that he gives to her, when her brow furrows and her silent frantic search through her case ends fruitlessly. She blushes beet red when he stretches over, because his fingers brush against hers as he pushes the offending stationery towards her; because Emily B. notices, and leans over to tell Emily H., and she hears their breathy laughter for the rest of the class. But he is stubborn, his head bent towards the page, eyes torn from his work only when he hears her shuffling uncomfortably in her chair, feet kicking at the old carpet, to offer her a smile.

 ‘My dad says I’d lose my head if it wasn’t screwed on’, she says, as they shuffle out of the classroom at the bell, as she hands him his pencil; and she feels like she might burst she’s so impressed with herself when he throws his head back and laughs.

-

 

He gives her an invitation, at the start of lunch, with the cord of his playtime hat swinging from his neck and his friends nearby.

She knows about popularity. She knows it is something desirable, unattainable, knows it makes people act horrid; and her dad always says it doesn’t matter a jot once you leave school. She knows she doesn’t care too much about it, but she also knows that _he_ is popular, and she is _not,_ and here he is. His hand is thrust towards her, as she perches on the wooden seat in the courtyard and searches his kind eyes for an ulterior motive; the fall of his shoulders or the sweep of his brow or the twitch of his mouth for a punchline to a joke.

Instead he just stands there, until she reaches out to grab the paper – P O O L P A R T Y printed in gaudy colours across it.

‘Don’t lose it’, he says, grins, earnest, and then tucks his pencil into his shorts pocket and wanders away towards the slide at the edge of the playground.

 -

 

She buys him a travel book for Australia – one that is yellowing at the edges, one that is stuffed into a dark corner of a small vintage bookstore. She drags her mother around to four or five places, pours over dozens of books until she finds one she thinks he’ll like; with a fading print of Uluru splashed across its cover. Her mother doesn’t ask, why this book, why this boy, why all this trouble. as she hands over the money, as she watches Clara cradle it all the way home like a child. She just watches, affection making her cheeks red, making her smile wide.

Clara wouldn’t know what to say if she did ask. The tender swell of pre-adolescent romance is foreign to her. She can’t put her finger on why she cares so much. Can’t figure out why it’s so important she impresses him. It just _is._

So she brings him a travel book for Australia, wrapped gingerly and carried carefully to his party – where it is promptly destroyed by an cannonball of water, which bloats the pages as the perpetrator hollers with laughter from the pool. Clara races to collect it, her brow furrowed, an indignant look (a borrowed swear word or two) thrown in the direction of the boy.

 -

 

Jamie finds her, a little while later, in the sun, holding pages between her fingers and sits down opposite her, quiet. After a moment or two, she clears her throat.

‘You can get back to the party, if you want?’

 He doesn’t answer. Instead, he lifts the covers, which have made a damp patch on the asphalt, and peers down at the picture.

 ‘I used to live near there’, he points, and she nods vigorously.  

 ‘I know’, she says, tripping over facts and figures, terminology and pronunciation (she’d practiced) in an effort to impress, and he peers at her while she rambles, blushing violently as words knot around her tongue, as they tumble onto the ground. She ends in a breathless heap, ‘I want to go’.

‘Oh yeah?’

‘I want to go everywhere’, she says, gesturing wildly to the book, to the pool, to the wide blue expanse of the mid-morning summer sky; and catches his eye, hidden beneath a wet shock of dark black hair.

‘Well you should come visit me, then, when I go back’, he mutters, holding her gaze for a moment before turning his attention back to drying the book, to making out the upside-down words, the old bleeding ink. He clears his throat. She catches her breath. She tries to catch her breath.

‘You’re leaving?’ she asks, and doesn’t understand why it stings when he nods, at the corner of her eyes where tears usually form; why her throat, stomach, heart feel tight, sore when he says, _next week._ He stays close to her, for a little while, squeezes her hand over the binding of the book, and they are silent in their vain attempts at rescue, their clumsy displays of affection. Her head feels very heavy. Her heart feels very full. She doesn’t understand.

-

 

She’s in love.

It’s too late, now. It’s all philosophical, because he’s gone by the time she figures it out. It takes a week, and he is on a long haul flight, and she stares at the desk between Emily B. and Emily H., doesn’t get any work done at all.

 But she’s in love, she declares to her mother as they make their way to school that morning, gripping tight to her hand and peering up at her through her overgrown fringe. Her brow is furrowed and her mouth downturned and her jaw is set, and she steels herself against the pitying laugh, the platitudes she expects from adults. She’s not too young, she’d tell her, determined. She’s not wrong. She’s calculated the symptoms, she’s diagnosed the problem – the tightness in her chest, the giddy feeling in her stomach, the way she felt like crying when he said he was leaving (by the side of the pool, loss burning her cheeks, the sun burning her back). She is (was) ( _is_ ) in love. There’s nothing she can do about it.  

 ‘I see’, she says instead, throwing a glance in either direction before moving across the road, voice walking the careful line between interested and unaffected. ‘The pool party boy?’

 ‘We could go, you know. He invited me.’

‘To Australia?’

 ‘Yeah. We could go. Win him back.’

 She wants to turn her mother (chuckling, face bright with adoration) around then and there, tug off her playground hat, march back across the road and back to their house and book the first flight. Storm into Darwin in a flurry of activity, of hormones – sweep him off his feet _._ She’s seen all the Meg Ryan movies. She _knows_ romantic gestures.

She takes her mother’s hand instead, tugs her askew shirt, bites her lip. She can hear it now – _we’ll see, we’ll see, we’ll see._

Instead she turns to Clara, briefly, her smile like Clara’s smile, her hair like Clara’s hair, her steely determination, her fierce, unabashed kindness the same.

 ‘Well if it’s _love_ ’, her mother says, squeezes, shrugs. ‘I suppose we have to’.

-

 

They don’t go. Money gets tight. Work gets busy. Life _happens._ Her mother –

 They don’t go and Clara forgets. Forgets the breadth of his accent, the way people would show their teeth when they said his name, when they called him out in class – their voice hitching on Jam _ie._ She forgets the wide berth of the J, the soft peaks of the M, the careful, clinical procedure of writing out his name that she used to be enthralled by.

 But she remembers how it felt. She remembers every time she feels it again – the joy, the adoration, the pain, which fills every nook, every cranny, every inch of her body; every time she falls in love, every time she sets foot somewhere new. And it makes her heart, which stops, which stays still beneath her ribs, caught between beats, very very full – when she finally gets there – the sun at their backs (much hotter here, much brighter), Ashildr’s hand clasped in hers, and the great, wide, red, wrinkled, ancient expanse in front of her. It knocks the breath right out of her.

 

 


	2. Anna.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She feels exactly the way she should about a best friend, except that she wants to kiss her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry, I know it's another OC, but my bisexual Clara head!canon would not budge and I had to invent the girl she would fall for first. ACK. Hope you like it, thank you for all your lovely words and kudos'. Real canon characters next chapter I PROMISE.

She is a fresh face amongst fresh faces. There is a small constellation of people, loitering outside _Jane Austen: History and Fiction_ , and the corridor fills with jangled nerves, inane, anxious chatter, shy, polite glances. But she is something different.

She is a bundle of caffeine. She is a tangle of scarves. She is all soft edges – a round, sort of heart-shaped face; corners and curves of her body swallowed by an oversized sweater, straw-coloured hair at all ends; and slender fingers with chipped nail-polish, which tap out a rhythm on her very large coffee cup (double shot, no sugar, no milk).

The smell wafts from the gap in the lid with the steam, as she cradles the cup very close to her face, underneath her mouth; and the air around her _buzzes_. It hums, with the sort of bright and careless energy that only coffee can give; that she seems to emit, with the wide and tender smile that she throws in Clara’s direction when she sees her watching and it makes her feel _everything_. Calm and anxious, lucid and overwrought, fraught and charmed – desperate to be her friend, half in love with her already.

 And she’s a goner when she shuffles her chair closer to her in the small classroom, leans forward conspiratorially; peering through the fringe that crowds Clara’s face and thrusting her hand forward for her to grasp.

‘They’re gonna make us do the _thing.’_

‘The thing?’

‘You know, the bonding thing’, she says, closer still, a curtain of wayward hair and the biggest eye roll she’s ever seen. ‘I thought I’d get ahead of the game’.

She raises an eyebrow, raises a shoulder, when the lecturer tells them to turn to the person next to them, learn three things about them. It’s only then that Clara realises that this girl ( _Anna_ , scrawled messily on the badge pinned to her front) picked up her pile of books, relocated to the chair next to her and watches now, bright, unguarded, like she already knows every last thing about Clara. Clara forgets every last thing about herself.

 She leans forward, to shake her hand – blushing fiercely when everything crashes to the carpet from her lap, when Anna picks up the battered, ancient book (lying chapter down on the floor). The pages are yellowing, there are cracks up and down its paperback spine, and brightly coloured tags decorating every third or fourth page. She flicks through it, buries her nose against the binding, against the words ( _if I loved you less I might be able to talk about it more)_ , against the odd combination of old ink and old paper and old perfume that makes your head spin.

‘Well’, she says, closing it gingerly and handing it back to Clara, ‘I love you already’.

 -

 

She feels exactly the way she should about a best friend, except that she wants to kiss her.

The thought escapes Clara as quickly as she stumbles across it, because they don’t stop to think about anything for too long, or too much; run headlong into everything instead, together. There is too much alcohol and late night study, pizza after pizza and coffee after coffee; staying awake until they can’t anymore, and falling asleep on top of the covers of her too small bed (Anna’s arm flung over Clara’s middle). They bounce off each other for months, like pinballs, endless energy meeting endless energy. They cram for every exam, and go to every party, drive too fast and drink too much and laugh too loud, make too many terrible decisions.

But she will tend to Clara’s hangovers, with soft resignation, quiet adoration – a wet towel and black tea and a bucket placed quietly by the side of her bed. She will sit by her side, tuck a stray strand of hair behind Clara’s ear, mumble _wimp_ with an affectionate smirk. And Clara (head beating a rhythm of its own, feeling sorry for herself) will wonder what it would be like, to lean up on her elbow, kiss her at the corner of her upturned mouth.

She will bring coffee to early morning lectures, or jam-filled donuts in donut-filled bags, will grin and bump her knee against Clara’s as they silently devour an entire breakfast; will barely stifle a chortle, a loud, honking, laugh (the best she’s ever heard), when Clara swallows a mouthful whole, nearly chokes, so she can answer a question, her hand shot in the air. _Nerd_ , she’ll whisper, very close to her – patting her back while she catches her breath. And Clara will wonder what it would be like, if she were brave enough, if she turned her head a little, her torso a little, caught Anna’s lips with her own – whether she would taste like coffee (double shot, no milk, no sugar), whether she would pull away.

She will look after her. She will be there, hours and hours, days and days, months and years, in the wee hours of the fresh autumn mornings when Clara can’t _breathe_ for crying; will anchor her when all she wants to do is run. Will make her eat. Will go to the funeral.

 _Sweetheart,_ she’ll mumble, again and again, sitting on the old tile floor next to their old bathtub, careful fingers untangling greasy hair, undoing the knots in the muscles of her aching naked back. And Clara, who cannot feel a thing (feels far too much) will watch her – let her help, let her wrap a towel around her shivering frame. She couldn’t love her more. She pauses, calf-deep in lukewarm water, bites her lip and looks square at Anna – all concern, all affection.  

‘I miss her’, she chokes.

‘I know.’

‘I love you.’

 The water hits the edges of the tub, spills a little over the edge, when Clara leans forward and kisses her, her fingers (puckered from the hot water), clumsy at the nape of her neck.

Anna doesn’t pull away, not when she kisses her again, not when the water slops at the bottom of her tracksuit pants. But she does bite at her lip, tuck a stray hair behind her ear when Clara takes a step back. She shuffles her feet, avoids her eyes, rearranges the soaking bathmat with the point of her toe; and Clara feels ill. She wraps the towel tighter around herself, opens and closes and opens her mouth, trying to decide whether effusive or taciturn is the best approach, apologetic or silent – a jumble of _sorrys_ sitting at the precipice of her treacherous mouth.

But before she figures it out, Anna clears her throat, straightens her back, offers a hand to help Clara out of the tub.

‘Let’s get you to bed’, is all she says; and then she doesn’t speak to her for a week.

 

-

 

She finds Anna’s copy of _Pride and Prejudice,_ tucked between the pillows of her fraying couch. She had borrowed _Emma_ – before – to study, the bloated, yellowed copy that smells of the breakdown of chemicals between new book and old, that will smell like her now; and Clara misses it desperately, wants her to bring it back and never ever leave again.

 But she has left her book, and in amongst the dog-eared pages, the haphazard underlining, the notes in the margins that they have left to each other, is a passage circled, with her name scrawled (in the messy, sloping handwriting Anna has) underneath it; and the vowels and consonants and syllable chase each other around in Clara’s head for days – _what are men compared to rocks and mountains?_

 

-

 

The next time she sees her, it’s raining, and she stands outside her door – soaked through – carrying contrition, cradling train tickets underneath her jacket.

She shakes her wet hair, which has plastered to her face, as she steps inside; pulls them out and thrusts them towards Clara.

‘Rocks and mountains, right?’ Clara says, restrained, but she falters quickly, and cannot recover when Anna’s face rises and falls in surprise, recognition, when she sees her book lying on the couch behind Clara.

‘Something like that, yeah’, she smiles, clears her throat. ‘I’m so sorry’.

‘You have nothing to be sorry for.’

‘But I do!’ Anna insists, taking a few steps towards Clara, whisking wet hair out of her eyes. ‘I wasn’t – wasn’t _brave_ enough. I wasn’t brave like you’.

 ‘I’m not brave’, she says, a shake of the head, a tug of her very large sweater, and Anna reaches out, tenderly, cautiously, to play with the sleeve that frays, hangs far longer than the length of her arm; and catches her eyes.

 ‘You’re the bravest person I know’, she says, and then swallows, breathes, trembles a little; leans forward to press her mouth against Clara’s – _I love you, I love you, come away with me_ , clumsy against her lips.  

**Author's Note:**

> For my true love, F, as a holiday/new year/celebration of her general gloriousness. My life is much brighter for you being in it; and I think you're gosh darn swell.
> 
> Title from July by Boy.


End file.
